1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of television signal processing. More specifically, the present invention relates to the capturing and decoding of vertical blanking interval (VBI) scan lines.
2. Background Information
Broadcasting of closed captions, teletext, etc. in the vertical blank intervals of television signals is known in the art. Conventionally, capturing and decoding of VBI scan lines are typically performed by hardware. While the prior art hardware approach offers the opportunity to tightly integrate the two operations, the approach has at least the following disadvantages:
a) it is inefficient for each hardware vendor to have to develop its own decoding solution; and PA1 b) it is difficult to mix and match different capture and decoding implementations.
Thus, it is desirable if a common decoding solution can be offered for capture hardware of multiple vendors.